Ultimate.ai, a virtual customer service agent builder, has closed a $20 million Series A round of funding, led by Omers Ventures with participation from Felicis Ventures and existing investors HV Capital, and Maki.vc — bringing its total raised to date to $25M+. The European startup’s flagship claim for the data-ingesting bot-builder platform is it’s capable […]
China has pledged that it would be sharing its COVID-19 vaccines with other countries, especially those with which it has close ties. While the country is not ready to deploy its vaccines internationally, it is gearing up the infrastructure for mass distribution. This week, Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao, announced that it has struck a partnership […]
Web Summit announced today that it will revive RISE, one of Asia’s largest tech conferences, in March 2022, moving it to Kuala Lumpur after five years in Hong Kong. It also announced a new event, called Web Summit Tokyo, that will launch in 2022, too. The flagship Web Summit event is currently taking place as […]
Bolt is better known for its ride-hailing service. But the company also operates an electric scooter service in 45 cities across Europe. Designed by the company’s in-house hardware team, the new model focuses on safety. As you can see on the photo, it’s a big scooter that weighs 19kg — that’s more than an average […]
PhonePe, the crown jewel in Flipkart’s acquisition by Walmart, is “partially” spinning off, the Bangalore-based financial services firm said on Thursday. To kick off its new journey, the firm said it has secured $700 million in a new financing round. This round, the name of which was not disclosed, was led by Walmart with participation […]
Last week I witnessed for myself how a new kind of robot really could — as sci-fi has been telling us for many years — create and serve us food. Today, Karakuri, a food robotics startup, unveils its first automated canteen to make meals: the “DK-One” robot. It’s also revealing a $8.4 million (£6.3million) investment, […]
Residents of Shenzhen will see truly driverless cars on the road starting Thursday. AutoX, a four-year-old startup backed by Alibaba, MediaTek and Shanghai Motors, is deploying a fleet of 25 unmanned vehicles in downtown Shenzhen, marking the first time any autonomous driving car in China tests without safety drivers or remote operators on public roads. […]
The National Labor Relations Board today issued a complaint against Google after investigating the firing of several employees last November. The complaint alleges Google violated parts of the National Labor Relations Act by surveilling employees, and generally interfered with, restrained and coerced employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the […]
There are now about 50 million people with dementia globally, a number the World Health Organization expects to triple by 2050. Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia and caregivers are often overwhelmed, without enough support. Neuroglee, a Singapore-based health tech startup, wants to help with a digital therapeutic platform created to treat patients in […]
The Atlas for Cities, the 500 Startups-backed market intelligence platform connecting tech companies with state and local governments, has been acquired by the Growth Catalyst Partners-backed publishing and market intelligence company Government Executive Media Group. The San Diego-based company will become the latest addition to a stable of publications and services that include the Route Fifty, publication […]
Google is almost running out of AR/VR projects to kill off. The company announced today in an email to Poly users that they will be shutting down the 3D-object creation and library platform “forever” next year. The service will shut down on June 30, 2021 and users won’t be able to upload 3D models to […]
Hulu’s social viewing feature, Watch Party, has now launched to all on-demand subscribers, the company announced today. The co-viewing feature was first introduced during the earlier days of the pandemic in 2020, allowing Hulu users to watch shows together from different locations, as well as chat and react to what they’re watching in a group […]
Shares of Salesforce traded lower today, despite the company hosting a multi-hour keynote that included a buffet of Marc Benioff. What’s going on? Essentially, since the Salesforce-Slack deal reached the ears of the public, shares of the CRM giant have fallen, while shares of the enterprise social upstart have risen sharply. That Slack did well […]
Apple releases its annual best apps list, a self-driving truck startup raises $350 million and the BioNTech/Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine gets emergency approval in the United Kingdom. This is your Daily Crunch for December 2, 2020. The big story: Apple announces its best apps of 2020 There were different winners — all selected by App Store […]
When the Salesforce-Slack deal was officially announced on Tuesday afternoon, and the number appeared, it was kind of hard to believe. Salesforce had shelled out more than $27 billion to buy Slack and bring it into the Salesforce family of products. The company sees a key missing piece in Slack, and that could explain why […]
Studying for med school is tough. What if it was more Pixar-like? Sketchy, a visual learning platform, takes complex material that a med student might need to memorize for an exam, and puts the information in an illustrated scene. For example, it uses a countryside kingdom to explain the coronavirus, or a salmon dinner to […]
Amazon in September announced it was bringing video calling support to its Fire TV platform. Today, the company says two-way video calling is now available with its Fire TV Cube devices (2nd gen.). The new feature will allow customers to pair a third-party webcam with their Fire TV Cube in order to make and receive […]
Trump’s crusade against a key internet law known as Section 230 tends to pop up in unlikely places. His Twitter feed on Thanksgiving, for one. Or at times you’d think the nation would be hearing from its leader on the matter at hand: a worsening pandemic that’s killed nearly 270,000 people in the United States. […]
Twitter said Wednesday that accounts protected with a hardware security key can now log in from their iPhone or Android device. The social media giant rolled out support for hardware security keys in 2018, allowing users to add a physical security barrier to their accounts in place of other two-factor authentication options, like a text […]
Amount, a new service that helps traditional banks compete in a digital world, has raised $81 million from none other than Goldman Sachs as it looks to help legacy fintech players compete with their more nimble digital counterparts. The company, which spun out from the startup lending company Avant in January of this year, has […]
